SeaWorld raises ticket prices

SeaWorld Orlando is raising the price of its basic theme-park ticket by $5 next month -- its third price increase in little more than a year.

The new price of $74.95, announced Friday, places the standard one-day adult SeaWorld ticket just a nickel below similar one-day, one-park tickets sold at Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando.

SeaWorld's parent company, Busch Entertainment Corp., also announced price increases for some of its other Florida parks starting Jan. 5. The price of a basic one-day ticket to Busch Gardens Tampa Bay will increase by $2, to $69.95; to Aquatica, its new Orlando water park, $3 to $44.95; and to Adventure Island, its Tampa water park, $2 to $39.95. Tickets for children ages 3 through 9 also will go up accordingly, each remaining $10 cheaper than the corresponding adult ticket.

Busch Entertainment, part of the global brewing company Anheuser-Busch InBev, also announced that it is extending its popular ticket deal for Florida residents, allowing them to buy one-day passes at the regular full price and use them as annual passes for no extra charge. The company also held the line on current prices for many of its multiday, multipark passes -- the two-park weekend ticket, for example, will remain $79.95.

The company did not raise ticket prices at Discovery Cove, its premium-resort park in Orlando. The 2009 winter-season admission there will remain $289 a person with the dolphin-swim experience and $189 a person without.

SeaWorld's new price structure, which will narrow the gap between its one-day, one-park ticket and its special multiday deals, continues a strategy pursued by Busch Entertainment for a couple years now, downplaying one-day ticket purchases while inducing people to take multiday deals, said Joe Couceiro, vice president of marketing and sales.

"We're also continuing our pay-for-a-day program so that our Florida guests can buy that ticket and come back all year, as we have done in the last few years," Couceiro said. "That's where the demand is, for us to be able to provide good values on bundling the parks, bundling the tickets."

The price of a basic SeaWorld adult ticket has now increased more than 15 percent since October 2007. The park last raised its ticket prices in July, and before that in November 2007. Disney and Universal each raised their prices for one-day, one-park tickets to $75 in August.